Machinima tutorials

There is an excellent set of tutorial videos here about filming in SL. They are made by David Miller, a member of Work Literacy, a Ning network created by Michele Martin who also runs a couple of very interesting career related blogs; The Bamboo Project and the Work Literacy Home which is a huge collection of links and learning resources. The Ning group is mainly composed of "knowledge workers" that explore the use of new technologies and Second Life is, of course, one of them.


Find more videos like this on Work Literacy

In addition, here is a very comprehensive set of SL related tutorials that is up to date.

First LIfe, Second Life, Third Life????

OMG, you guys have to see this. We've talked so much about SL being so much like RL with people having jobs, etc. Well, this is what to do when you're SL just isn't enough for you, or your SL gets to be too stressful. :)

Baby Step Digital Design for theatre and dance

Tomorrow evening in the REVE from 7pm to 9pm Digital Design students from the School of Theatre and Dance will be presenting research regarding teledramatics, SecondLife virtual venue, polycom video conferencing and pidip and pdp, motion control DMX and remote Internet2 performance

Come check it out!!!

SL impact in Education

This March 2008 report about responses that were received on the topic "Measuring the impact of Second Life for educational purposes" by John Kirriemuir (Silversprite Helsinki), is a transcript of a meeting held in Second Life to discuss the issues raised by a UK academic survey on the subject of developing, or teaching in Second Life.

The Eduserve Foundation ( check their Eduserv Island if you have not done it already) is evaluating "what is happening in SL, particularly with regards to its use in education, and partly with the intention of providing help and support to educators and librarians as they begin to make use of SL as part of thier service delivery to end-users." Very interesting and timely indeed.

You can find the pdf here.

The Business Interface of the Future, Today

Emgeetee Island 131.75.2 Get a free t-shirt and make sure you take your swimsuit:-)

Our guest lecturer for next Tuesday, March 4th, will be Dr. Charles Wankel.

He is the leading founder and director of scholarly virtual communities for management professors, currently directing seven, with thousands of participants in more than seventy nations. He has run online international Internet collaborations in teaching and research for more than a decade.

Dr. Wankel, is Associate Professor of Management at St. John's University, New York, holds a doctorate from New York University where he was admitted to Beta Gamma Sigma, the national honor society for business disciplines. He was awarded the Outstanding Service in Management Education and Development Award at the Academy of Management's 2004 meeting.

One of his interests is to establish virtual team collaborations with diverse educational institutions so this is an excellent opportunity to establish a relationship with this distinguished and internationally recognized expert.

Two teams from Bucknell University's Foundation Seminar

He was a Distinguished Speaker at the E-ducation without Borders 2005 Conference in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, the keynote speaker at the Nippon Academy of Management Education 's Tokyo meeting, Visiting Professor at Banking University in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, Vietnam.

He has been an invited lecturer at the University of Malaysia, the National University of Singapore, the Czech Management Center, the University of Warsaw, the Polish Academy of Sciences, and the University of Toronto. U.S. universities that have invited him to lecture include Harvard and Columbia.

Just for fun

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flkgNn50k14

VR vs. RL forum

You are not isolated in your concerns or simple curiosity about VR and the concept of "reality" as a whole. The global importance of the issue is evident when it becomes the subject of a forum at Davos (Davos is famous as the host to the annual meetings of the World Economic Forum (WEF), an annual meeting of global political and business elites, which is often referred to as simply Davos.)
The picture above gives you a clue about the level of this Forum.
Here is what will be happening as we study pretty much the same subject in our class:
Note the participants...
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Open Forum Davos 2008
24. - 26. January 2008

The Open Forum Davos will include a section on "Virtual Worlds - Fiction or Reality?", which will take place on Saturday 26 January at the Swiss Alpine High School (SAMD). The section will include:
- Rafael Capurro, Professor, Information management and information ethics, Stuttgart Media University, Germany
- Florence Develey, Pastor, Switzerland
- Reid Hoffman, Chairman and President, LinkedIn Corporation, USA
- Philip Rosedale, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Linden Lab, USA
- Joseph Weizenbaum, Former Professor of Computer Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA

More information on the Open Forum which is organized by the Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches (FSPC) and the World Economic Forum (WEF) can be found at:

http://www.openforumdavos.ch/en/home/home.html

More Information of the section is provided at:

http://www.openforumdavos.ch/en/programm/virtual-worlds.html

Second Life vs. Real Life

I’m fascinated by the development of SL in relation to real life. SL seems to be a utopian society free of many problems and challenges we face in RL. Obesity seems to have been eliminated. I have yet to see a hospital to treat the sick. I know I’ve slammed my head into the sides of a few building while flying with no adverse affects. I’m not sure if anyone has to work and pay bills.

Then again, things may not be as they seem. I noticed the mention of a SL police blotter in a previous post. Apparently there are also restrictions on banking and gambling indicating there is some level of authoritarian control despite an apparent lack of government. I’ve also been exposed to underground cultures in SL. The other day, I was approached by someone asking if I knew of any BDSM locations within SL. Maybe he inquired because I was wearing a free chainmail shirt I had picked up. Does SL reflect the desires, thoughts and feelings of people who are less likely to express them in real life for fear of being judged and even becoming an outcast?

I wonder to what extent the evolution of SL will ultimately parallel RL. Will we see people trying to take control and establish an SL government? Will opposing groups form and clash over religion, politics, ethics, or other potential divisive matters? With Linden $ being available, will socioeconomic stratification permeate the SL world? Is there a distinct line that separates SL from RL and what happens when the line is crossed? In the end, will SL be virtually the same as RL?

WeGame example

Welcome to our Virtual meeting!

Cénotaphe a Newton

And welcome to this interdisciplinary exploration of Virtual Worlds.

While Extropians wish for a better tomorrow and hope for their individual brains to one day be uploaded into the immortal being yet to come, reality has caught-up with them like a veritable unstoppable avalanche.

We are (you and me) uploading our consciousness, knowledge and experience, not as individuals but as a species every time we search for a word, an image, a concept. Every time we tag and bookmark the ‘cloud’ becomes more informed of our ways, thoughts and sensibilities or lack of them.

I thought appropriate to illustrate this first post for the class with Étienne-Louis Boullée's Cénotaphe a Newton, (1784). As one of the most interesting examples of "unbuilt architecture", it exemplifies what Katherine Hayles calls the "unfinish" nature of anything computer. And where else could the Cenotaphe exist but in the virtual world, itself an unfinished repository of illusion?